This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Smithereens B-Sides The Beatles is just what it says it is, The Smithereens performing B-Sides of The Beatles.  I listened to this album through twice last night and foresee listening to it many more times in the future.  Oh!  I also found out while searching the L’s database, The Smithereens also did a cover of The Who’s Tommy!

B-Sides The Beatles is the ninth studio album by The Smithereens, released 2 September 2008. The album features the band covering Beatles B-sides released in America in 1964 and early 1965. B-Sides The Beatles is the second album from The Smithereens that’s devoted entirely to Beatles covers. Their 2007 release, Meet The Smithereens!, was a song-by-song re-creation of The Beatles’ 1964 debut American album, Meet The Beatles! Smithereens co-producer and engineer Kurt Reil explained: “The project started while we were making demos in preparation for the next new original Smithereens album. As the band warmed up on obscure Beatles B-sides they used to play in clubs, we soon realized there was some unfinished Beatles business for The Smithereens, especially in light of the success of Meet The Smithereens!, and the idea for a follow up was born.”

“There’s a Place” is a song co-written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and first released as a track on the Beatles’ debut LP, Please Please Me. Lennon and McCartney share lead vocals, with George Harrison providing backing vocals. In the US it was released on Introducing… The Beatles (Vee-Jay Records) and as the B-side of “Twist and Shout”, and was finally released by Capitol Records on Rarities in 1980. The title was inspired by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story, which contained the line: “There’s a place for us.” McCartney admits owning the album of the film’s soundtrack at the time of writing “There’s a Place” and acknowledges its influence. The song’s subject matter was pitched on higher intellectual plane than most pop songs of that period, as Lennon explained: “‘There’s a Place’ was my attempt at a sort of Motown, black thing. It says: ‘In my mind there’s no sorrow…’ It’s all in your mind.”

There is a place
Where I can go
When I feel low
When I feel blue
And it’s my mind
And there’s no time when I’m alone

I think of you
And things you do
Go ’round my head
The things you said
Like “I love only you”

In my mind there’s no sorrow
Don’t you know that it’s so
There’ll be no sad tomorrow
Don’t you know that it’s so

There is a place
Where I can go
When I feel low
When I feel blue
And it’s my mind
And there’s no time when I’m alone
There’s a place

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul Mccartney